liqueur

Etymology

It is borrowed from French liqueur (“liquid, liquor”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Old French licour (“a liquid”), also licor,^[3][6][4][5] which is from Latin liquor (“a liquid; liquidity”),^[4][3][7] from liqueō (“to be fluid”).^[4][3] The Old French word had already given English liquor about 1200.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A strong, sweetened and flavoured alcoholic drink: 1729, in Pope's The Dunciad, according to Barnhart, with the same year in Etymonline and Merriam-Webster Unabridged.^[4][3][5] The OED's first quotation is from Pope's New Dunciad of 1742,^[2] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1735–45.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The French word could mean any liquid or liquor,^[5][3] but English took it for the sweet, flavoured kind only,^[2][3] leaving the wider sense of drink to the older liquor.^[3] Technical use in winemaking appears in 1872, in Thudichum and Dupré's treatise on wine: a mixture of sugar with wine or alcohol that sweetens champagne, and a verb for flavouring champagne with it.^[2] G. Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) has liqueur up, to take a liqueur.^[2] In the 20th century the word was shortened from compounds, for a small glass and for a chocolate with a liqueur filling.^[2][9]

Timeline

• 1729 – a sweet, flavoured spirit.^[4][3][5] The OED's first quotation is from 1742.^[2]
• 1872 – noun, a sugar mixture used to sweeten champagne; verb, to flavour champagne with it.^[2]
• 1894 – verb, liqueur up, to take a liqueur.^[2]
• 1907 – short for a liqueur glass or a liqueur chocolate.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of various strong, sweet alcoholic spirits flavoured with aromatic substances, usually drunk after a meal or mixed into a cocktail; also a glass of one: She ordered an almond liqueur with her coffee.^{[10][5][9][2]}
2. A solution of sugar and aged wine used in making champagne.^[5][2]
3. A hollow chocolate with such a drink inside.^[10][9][2]
4. A very small drinking glass for such drinks.^[9][2]

Verb

1. To treat or flavour with liqueur, especially champagne.^[5][2]

Related words

• liquid
• liquidate
• liquidity
• liquor

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins